the role of radiocommunications for...

ICTP-ITU/BDT-URSI School on Radio-Based Computer Networking for Research and Training in Developing Countries The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics ICTP, Trieste (Italy), 7th February - 4th March 2005

The role of radiocommunications for development

(Talk at the opening of the School)

Ryszard StruzakCo-Director of the School

Note: These are preliminary notes, intended only for distribution to participants. Beware of misprints!

Outline

• Development and digital divide• Why radio?• Short film

Property of R Struzak 2

Human development - what is it?

• … evolution from a less advanced to more advanced stage ...

• Central element: knowledge creating, gathering, and sharing, and applying it to solve problems– The progress of humanity - since the Stone Age until the XXI century

- has been possible thanks to gathering and sharing knowledge …

• Involves teaching & learning i.e. collaboration (if we excluding spying)

• J Delors: Learning: the treasure within; Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education in the Twenty-first Century, UNESCO 1996

• “Knowledge is central to development” - World Bank, 1998, quoted after Sarah Cummings, Richard Heeks & Marleen Huysman: ‘Knowledge and Learning in Online Networks in Development - A Social Capital Perspective’ (2003); http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/publications/wp/di/index.htm;


• Knowledge bases on information and data that reside in information infrastructures

• Access to knowledge = access to information infrastructures

• Barriers: • Physical, Financial, Regulatory,

Organizational, Mental, etc.


In the last 3 years…

• The amount of new information stored on paper, film, magnetic, and optical media worldwide was ~800 MB per person per year, in average

• It would take ~10m of books to store it (formatted) on paper.

• It has about doubled during that period


• 92% of all information was stored on magnetic media

• Information stored on paper was only ~0.01%!• If that trend continues

– Almost all information will be in electronic format– More new information will be created over the next 3

years than has been produced over the entire history of mankind

» http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/


“Digital divide”• Map of relative

ability of individuals to access IT infrastructures

• Digital Access Index (DAI)

• Prepared by ITU for WSIS 2003

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/dai/

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/feb04/0204bmapf1.pdfhttp://www.internetworldstats.com/list3.htm


Business perspective

• ICT created a big industry that must continuously grow to keep profits and workplaces

• As markets in wealthy regions approach saturation, new markets are sought

• An inexpensive technology would create new markets in poor regions - 80% of the world population


Humanitarian perspective

• Kofi Annan, 2000– We, The Peoples: The

Role of the UN in the 21-st Century. Millennium Report (2000)

– Telecommunications close the ‘digital gap: information-rich vs. information-poor’

UN Secretary General, Report 2000 (http://www.un.org/millennium/sg/report/full.htm)


Challenge

• Assuring universal access to information infrastructure in rural, remote, and under-developed regions is an enormous challenge of the 21st century

• This school is limited to discussions on new radio technologies that could facilitate access to information infrastructures


International collaboration

• It could not be possible without collaboration and support offered by a number of organizations and individuals:– ICTP http://wireless.ictp.it/– UNESCO http://portal.unesco.org/en– ITU http://www.itu.int/home/– URSI http://www.ursi.org/– World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/

Thanks to all who have contributed!


Outline



Why radio?• Because it is unique access technology to local and

global information infrastructures – In emergency situations - assuring liaison anywhere and anytime

» The December 2004 tsunami in South-East Asia evidenced the role of radiocommunications

» Other aspects are discussed in R Struzak: Emergency Telecommunications with and in the Field; UN OCHA 2000

• Most future telecommunication devices will be mobile or transportable – wireless

» J Zander, SL Kim: Radio resource management for wireless networks; Artech House 2001, p. 315

• In some situations, radio is also the least expensive technology – Especially in sparsely-populated and remote regions with no pre-

existing wired/ cabled telecommunications


Focus on radio

Radio waves carry information to fixed & mobile users at no cost• Ubiquitous - accessible at any place, any time…* • Free; no right-of-way• Fast: ~300’000 km/s• Deployment cost & time• Indestructible - no theft, snow, wind, flood, earthquake, tornado, trees…• No cable production/ transport/ maintenance…

*Over the Earth’s surface


A

Shadowed area of theEarth’s surface

hMax LOS cell

B

RO

P

Evolution

LOS = Line-Of-Sight

• Terrestrial radio– Microwave LOS– HF ionospheric

• Satellite radio– LEO, GEO, MEO

• Stratospheric radio

Ionosphere


Terrestrial radio

• Patrick Gelsinger (INTEL Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer), advises developing nations to leapfrog the digital gap using fiber optic cable and terrestrial wireless technology, WiFi and WiMAX

» Quoted after Larry Press, "Wireless Internet connectivity for developing nations," First Monday, volume 8, number 9 (September 2003), at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_9/press/index.html#note4.

» See http://www.ieee802.org/16/ and http://www.ieee802.org/20/.


• The school lectures and practical work focus on various aspects of microwave WiFi & WiMAX technologies

• WiFi stays for "Wireless Fidelity", a set of IEEE 802.11standards for wireless local area networks (WLAN)

• WiFi promises communications at speeds up to 11 Mbps within rooms, extendable up to 25 km http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wifi

• WiMAX an acronym for “Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access” a set of IEEE 802.16 standards (2003)

• WiMAX promises communication over distances up to 50 km at speeds up to 70 Mbps in three architectures, point–to–point, point–to–multipoint and point–to–multipoint plus a neighborhood mesh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax


Terrestrial radio coverage • Microwave

terrestrial LOS systems suffer from terrain obstacles

• Short-wave systems are narrow-band and suffer from fading

Source: http://www.cplus.org/rmw/rme.html


GEO satellites• GEO-satellite

based services are often cheaper than terrestrial ones when the cost is shared by many users

• But they are impractical for some applications (latency)

Property of R Struzak 19Source: ESA - (Ariane 5)

• Very small aperture terminals (VSAT) are the cheapest GEO satellite terminals

• There are more than 500,000 VSAT systems operating in more than 120 countries

» According to the Global VSAT Forum, [http://www.gvf.org/].

• We will have later special lectures and practical exercises with a VSAT station.


LEO satellites• Low earth orbit (LEO) satellites

overcome the latency and cost problems of GEO satellites

• At any point on the earth, a single LEO satellite is visible during a short time period

• That allows for store and forward applications like e–mail, but excludes interactive applications.

• Continuous service can be assured by a satellite constellation in which every point on earth is visible to at least one satellite at all times (plus inter–satellite communication links). But it is a very expensive solution.

– For further reading see e.g.: R Struzak: Satellite industries at the turn of the century; http://www.intercomms.net/AUG03/content/struzak2.php

– For store-and-forward email see e.g. http://www.vita.org/programs/communication.htm


Source: This image was generated using Satellite Constellation Visualizer, at http://sourceforge.net/projects/savi/.

Launch of LEO (Teledesic) satellite

Property of R Struzak 22(Source: Orbital Science Corp., 1998)

HAPS


• HAPS are one alternative to terrestrial and satellite links.

• A typical HAP would fly about 20 km above the ground, where wind speed is relatively low.

• It would have a footprint between 60–400 kilometers in diameter depending upon platform altitude and ground antenna inclination.

• A HAP could have optical or radio links to other HAPs or to satellites in addition to communicating with ground stations.

Radio-controlled, solar-powered Helios prototype during its test flight over the Hawaiian Islands on 14 July 2001. (NASA Dryden Flight Research Centre Photo Collection. Courtesy of NASA.)

• The proponents of HAPS technology promise services much cheaper that the terrestrial and satellite systems

• There are a number of R&D projects under way, but no HAP station has been in operation yet

» R Struzak: Mobile telecommunications via stratosphere; http://www.intercomms.net/AUG03/content/struzak1.phphttp://www.capanina.org/;http://www.capanina.org/news.php (videos)

– There will be a short film on one of HAPS technologies at the end of the lecture


Other perspectives

• Ultra-wideband technology (UWB) – UWB promises cheap communications below

levels of existing signal environment • Telecommunications via power lines

– No additional wires required• The promises and problems of these

technologies will be discussed separately during the school


Warning…• Many predictions made in the past have

proved to be dramatically wrong, even when made by experts with impeccable credentials...

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible” [Lord Kelvin, famous physicists, 1897]

“Radio has no future” [Lord Kelvin, famous physicists, 1897]“There is no reason for any individual to

have a computer in their home” [Ken Olsen, Founder & President of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977]


• Development involves various problems and interests, various needs, various cultures and systems of values, etc.

• These differ significantly among social groups and nations, making mutual understanding and solidarity difficult


• Access technology is only one of the necessary elements

• Technology alone could not bridge the digital gap

• Liberal market mechanism is unable to assure universal access and eradicate poverty. The 1970-2000 technological boom in the USA did not change the poverty rate (>10%) but increased the income gap between the rich and the poor (by ~50%)

» (K. Venkat: Delving into the Digital Divide; IEEE Spectrum Feb 2002, p.16)


• One of obstacles is excessive costs of accessing scientific and technical publications, computer programs, data sets etc. that are protected by intellectual property rights

• Will we make these costs affordable?

• Quiz– How many of you would be ready to use free

software?

– How many of you would be ready to offer your work free?

» See http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html,


http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm, http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/.

Final remark

• Digital divide is a manifestation of poverty - it is meaningless for those who lack safe water, adequate nutrition, basic education, and other essentials…


Outline



Any question ?

Thank you for your attention

Short film


Copyright note

• Copyright © 2004 Ryszard Struzak. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenbses/by/1.0

• These materials may be used freely for individual study, research, and education in not-for-profit applications. Any other use (and/or displaying the material in the WWW) requires the written author’s permission

• If you cite these materials, please credit the author. If you have comments or suggestions, please send these directly to the author at [email protected].


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